


Rainbows

by LambentLaments



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Coming Out, Gay Pride, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-09
Updated: 2015-06-09
Packaged: 2018-04-03 14:58:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4105090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LambentLaments/pseuds/LambentLaments
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will and Nico are going to gay pride. There are complications.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rainbows

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: homophobia  
> Nico says some really controversial stuff here. It does not mean I believe in them, or that I think anyone should.
> 
> Inspired by the authorities banning my city's annual (and only) gay pride this year.

“You ready to go, baby?” you say, opening the door of cabin 13. You are the only one in camp Nico wouldn’t have skeleton warriors attack for failing to knock, and you’re definitely planning to abuse this newfound power. “Everyone’s waiting.”

Nico’s reclined in his bed, on top of the grey comforters and leaning against the headboard, but he sits up immediately when he sees you enter. “What are you wearing?” he says in half-horrified awe.

You frown down yourself. You _are_ a teensy bit self-conscious about how short your shorts are, especially since they seem to be a Nyan-cat joke item (joke’s on you Cecil, I’m wearing them- you’d said), but they have rainbow stitches all over that you consider appropriate for the occasion.

Or maybe you’re wearing too much glitter.

But Nico’s staring at your rainbow tank-top. “Did Iris throw up at you?”

“Uh, no. I’m wearing pride flag colors, duh.”

Nico nods, but you know him well enough by now to see he doesn’t have a clue what he’s nodding to. “Because people are like rainbows, you know?” you explain. “The world is better off with a whole spectrum of different people, and we should all be proud of ourselves for contributing.”

You go sit on the bed, one leg fully up, the other dangling over the edge, so that you can face him. The bed isn’t the weird coffin one from last year. The son of Hades replaced that and its brothers with black iron-grated ones only a couple months after Gaea’s defeat and the fated three-day infirmary stay. In a way you miss those kitschy things, and not just for shock value. There are good memories there. Nothing happened, not physically, but there were a lot of long, private conversations held there, and it was on that bed, seeing Nico trying unsuccessfully to hide a smile, you realized you would give anything to kiss the boy senseless.

But maybe now that you _can_ do just that (and did!), you don’t need that coffin bed after all.

“Is that mandatory? Wearing rainbows, I mean,” Nico says, pointing at your shirt.

You have a second of debate. As much as you’d love to wear matching shirts with your brand-new boyfriend (your boyfriend! The word still makes you grin stupidly every time you think it), you’re not going to ruin your chance of initiating said boyfriend to his first pride. You’ve had enough trouble as it is convincing Nico to go in the first place.

“Nah. Who cares what you wear. Everyone knows you only wear black. And maybe tropical.” You run a hand over Nico’s shirt to emphasize your point, and get a nice feel of those abs. Suave, Will, suave. “Plus, all the colors put together is black. So basically what you’re wearing is like, the penultimate rainbow.”

You prep yourself for a major eye roll for that inanity, but it never comes. Instead Nico nods distractedly and plays with his skull ring.

“Angel, what’s wrong?”

You see how tense and nervous he looks. You appreciate that Nico trusts you enough to let down his façade of scary, inapproachable son of death slash ghost king, but you’d rather much not have him unhappy at all.

“Come on, you can tell me.”

“Will, I don’t think this is a good idea, going to pride.”

You try not to let on how disappointed you are. You’ve expected Nico getting cold feet, though.

“Angel, I was kidding. Seriously it’s fine what you wear. The whole point of pride is being who you are, there’s no need to be nervous.”

“It’s not that,” he mutters.

“What is it then?”

Nico’s nervousness is getting his ADHD out of hand, and his ring is spinning crazy fast. Maybe you should get him a proper fidget ring, just so he doesn’t get friction burns. You can probably get one in black.

“If I go, everyone’s gonna know I’m… you know.”

Nico’s come far with his sexuality, he really has. But he still says stuff that makes you want to find out every single thing that put him so far deep into the closet and beat the shit out of them. Whenever you ask about it he’ll reply something generic about being born in the thirties, and how talking about it is too painful.

“A lot of the guys joining us today are straight, but I guess you’ll be making a public statement, coming with me. But does that really matter to you? Stupid people who don’t even know you seeing you be yourself? “

“ _People_ , I don’t care about. Not anymore I guess.” He clears his throat and refuses to meet your eyes. “I haven’t actually come out to Hazel.”

“What?” Nico visibly winces, and you immediately regret it. It’s just that Nico’s come out to quite a few people in camp. You can’t believe he hasn’t told his sister, the closest person in his life.

“She knows about us, though, right? I mean, we haven’t officially told anyone but we haven’t been exactly subtle about it.”

Actually Nico has. You’re the one who’s been throwing out fluffy pet names and making up excuses for physical contact for the last year. But you digress.

“Maybe? Probably not, though. You know how she gets all flustered whenever straight couples get cosy? She’s never like that whenever you grope me.”

You gasp. “I never groped you.”

Nico raises his eyebrow. “Anyway, believe me when I say the bar for masculinity was _way_ lower in the thirties.”

“Really?”

“People tend to be less concerned about looking camp or getting touchy with guys when there isn’t a question of your sexuality at all, I suppose.”

“So Hazel doesn’t know. Why didn’t you tell her?”

Nico’s still spinning that stupid ring. You grab his hands. Just to stop him fidgeting, of course.

Okay maybe you do grope him a bit.

“She’s from the thirties,” he says finally.

“So are you,” you point out.

“It’s different. She’s only had what, two years of living in the modern world. And unlike me she wasn’t isolated from society. She went to school, she actually talked to people. It’s incredibly selfish and implausible for me to wish that she _wasn’t_ homophobic.”

“Hazel’s not a bad person, I think she’d be-“

“No, of course not. She’s the sweetest person I know. But you don’t understand. Here and now, what’s good and bad are different. You can’t judge someone from the thirties with 21st century rules.

“There are still people who hate gay people, I know. But here they’re the abnormal, kinda purposefully ignorant ones. It takes self-will to go against the general consensus. But most people just go with what society tells them, and that doesn't mean they’re any the worse for it.”

Nico’s heating up, words coming in angry staccatos. You can feel death rolling off of him as a defense system. You want to argue, tell him something to calm him down, but you also realize you’re seeing him mentally beating the shit out of everything that put him into the closet, so you say silent.

“Imagine, Will. You know homosexuality was illegal. But you’re forgetting that most people, and I mean most people- people who are good and kind and rainbows and flowers, they agreed too. Try to imagine that. They didn’t necessarily think homosexuals were evil or sinful whatever it is these most of these modern homophobes think. They didn’t _hate_ us. They thought we were confused, or misled, and they genuinely thought they were helping, when they tried to ‘correct’ it.

“You did not talk about homosexuality outside that context, the same way we don’t talk about pedophiles or necrophiles. Homosexuals did not exist in normal society. Imagine that we don’t exist. You see a guy in a pink suit tap dancing and singing in falsetto, but no one questions if he’s homosexual, because that’s really rude, it’s like asking if he flashes kiddies for a hobby. No it’s more than rude, it’s inconceivable, because homosexuality doesn’t exist in normal people.”

“You know they were wrong, right, baby?” you say, genuinely concerned, horrified by the stuff he’s saying.

“Yes, they’re wrong now. But that’s what I’m saying. They weren’t wrong _then_. Stop thinking good and bad as a set fixture. There’s no divine set of rules, not for mortals. When society says something’s wrong, it’s wrong. End of question.”

“Do you think Hazel thinks like that?”

“I hope she doesn’t, but I don’t see how. Unless her mother was exceptionally liberal minded, she wouldn’t have been taught any better, and I don’t think that’s the case.” He squeezes your hand. “I’m sorry I dumped this on you.”

“No, it’s all right. I think I understand a bit better now.”

A bit. You've had your share of bullying in mortal schools, but it's hard to wrap your head around what Nico's been subjected to, not when you had support from your mom and your siblings. Especially since paintings of your dad's boy-toy are displayed at any half decent museums around the world. You shift to get a bit closer to him. “So you haven’t told Hazel because you think she’ll reject you?”

He shakes his head. “No, she won’t. She’s still going to love me, I know that.”

“Then what are you afraid of? She’ll just have to learn that she was wrong.”

“This, me coming out, it’s going to affect us in a big way. It’s not going to be- oh, so you’re gay. Thanks for telling me bro. She’s going to feel incredibly sorry for me. She’s gonna feel guilty she felt homophobic, even though it wasn’t her fault. I don’t want her to feel like she could’ve done something before, like she has to own up to me, cause she’s like that you know? I don’t want to be the one who makes her feel bad about herself. I guess I thought I would wait until she was more used to modern views, when she experienced more of America outside New Rome."

“You’ve given this a lot of thought haven’t you? But baby, you’re being an idiot.”

He gives you a glare, but you can see there’s no heart in it.

“Back in the thirties, wasn’t there a lot of racism? And sexism?”

Nico nods, looking suspicious at the turn of talk.

“Did you think any less of Hazel because of that?”

Nico blanches at the very thought. “No, of course not.”

“Did you feel guilty about having racist and sexist thoughts after you met Hazel?”

“I guess,” he says quietly.

“Would you rather have had Hazel try to be white and male so you wouldn’t have to feel guilty?”

“No, but,” he splutters. “That’s different.”

“How, how is it so different? Because you can hide it?” He doesn’t answer. “It’s your identity, it’s your choice whether you decide to tell her or not. But don’t make excuses like that. Hazel won’t appreciate being used as a pretext for your cowardice.”

Nico moves onto his knees, looking at you, and you’re sure he’s going to give you a black eye like he did last April Fools when you cursed him to sing Journey songs every time he opened his mouth.

He kisses you instead.

You’re never, ever gonna say this to anyone, let alone Nico, but Nico’s a bad kisser. He’ll get better through experience, you’re sure, and he more than makes up for it by blushing crazy and looking at you like you gave him the best time of his life afterwards. But at this point he’s all stiff and nervous. Plus he has really dry, chapped lips and a tendency to forget he actually has a tongue.

You’ll give this one an eight, though. Extra points for initiating. And the element of surprise.

“I fucking hate that you’re right.” He says when he pulls back.

“You kiss me with that filthy mouth?”

“I thought I answered that question just now.” Nico’s halfway on your lap, and you miss the weight when he pulls off to get off the bed. “Urgh. I got glitter in my mouth.”

“So you’re gonna tell Hazel?”

“Yeah. Get going without me, all right?”

That’s when you realize the green lights in the cabin are shimmering down to stumps, filling the already dark room with shadows. “I didn’t mean right now! Don’t you dare, Nico di Ange-“

“Fuck,” you say to an empty cabin.

 

 

Lady Gaga is really, really loud from where you are, and you’d kinda like to cheer with everyone around you, but you keep craning your neck, unable to really enjoy the atmosphere. You really don’t want to come without Nico, but he’s implied he’d be here later on, hadn’t he?

You watch as Butch creates mini rainbows around a twink, the smaller man blowing bubbles wearing nothing but a golden throng. The rainbows shimmer in the crowd, each lasting for about a minute and then dissipating. You’re not sure what the mortals are seeing, some kind of laser-induced special effect probably. You hope they won’t be attracting any monsters at the very least. It’ll be catastrophe if this big a crowd panics.

Butch throws an especially big rainbow, and people around him whoops. All the kids from Iris cabin are here today; they’re all queer, every last one of them- not gay or bi either but a beautiful conglomeration of various –sexuals, half of which you’re not sure you even understand. (In fact you’re still not entirely certain that one girl wasn’t pulling your leg with ‘plantkin’. But then you never know.) It’s almost as if Iris blessed them with an express wish for diversity.

Someone pokes you in the back. You ignore it, but then they poke you again, and you turn around to tell them to go easy with the drink.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” You say, grinning.

Nico’s here with Hazel, and they’re both really red-eyed, but they’re both smiling, and they’re holding hands like some old-fashioned school girl and boy.

Which, you realize, are exactly who they are.

Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to have Hazel’s first introduction to queer culture be gay pride, not something tamer, she’s wide-eyed and red from embarrassment almost the whole time. But you know it’s going to be okay. If your utter pig-headed idiot of a boyfriend can change for the better, you’re ready to bet sweet, kind-hearted Hazel certainly can, too.

In fact you’re sure of it. Because when you kiss the pig-headed idiot senseless later that day, thinking Hazel is looking the other way, you open your eyes to see her giving you a thumbs up, her other hand fanning her face.

Nico ends the kiss, blushing crazy and looking at you like you just gave him the best time of his life.

You’ll give this one a nine.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic's about justifying homophobic behavior from people you love, especially when you're closeted, which is a really personal subject for me. I wrote from my own experience, and the stuff said above isn't meant to be ideal, none of it. I don't agree with what Nico says here. I don't even fully agree with what Will says here.


End file.
